Posted on 01/14/2008 3:54:05 AM PST by don-o
Fibromyalgia is a real disease. Or so says Pfizer in a new television advertising campaign for Lyrica, the first medicine approved to treat the pain condition, whose very existence is questioned by some doctors.
For patient advocacy groups and doctors who specialize in fibromyalgia, the Lyrica approval is a milestone. They say they hope Lyrica and two other drugs that may be approved this year will legitimize fibromyalgia, just as Prozac brought depression into the mainstream.
But other doctors including the one who wrote the 1990 paper that defined fibromyalgia but who has since changed his mind say that the disease does not exist and that Lyrica and the other drugs will be taken by millions of people who do not need them.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
>>snip<<
"the average fibromyalgia patient in the 2007 survey reported weighing 180 pounds and standing 5 feet 4 inches."
Chicken or egg?
My dad took Lyrica for chronic neuropathic pain and had to stop because it caused bizarre and scary visual hallucinations.
The problem is that people are dying for a diagnosis to cure the simple pains of growing old so they are given whatever fits their symptoms.
Fibromyalgia is a real disease but over diagnosed IMO. You get people who are cured by losing weight or exercising, they never had it in the first place.
When I worked Psych, this was the big diagnosis. Then it was Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. In many cases, they were cured with diet and exercise. Some weren’t, those were real. You seem to have hit the nail on the head with your observations.
I did not believe that Fibromyalgia was a real disease, but thought it was a catch-all disease for anything remotely similar that lazy or unskilled doctors could not diagnose. However, my mother-in-law turned ill over a couple of months time to the point that she could barely function due to the pain she was experiencing. Local doctors in our rural area could not diagnose it. Doctors in Tucson could not diagnose it and the insurance decided to stop paying to find a diagnosis and just let her suffer. My brother-in-law scraped up enough cash to send her to Mayo Clinic. After a week of tests, and a team of doctors, the diagnosis was Fibromyalgia. I’ve seen its effects close-up and it isn’t pretty.
Real or not, the drug will have the usual placebo effect. The other good news is even if doctors misdiagnose some other condition as this one, the drug will probably work just as well.
Most of the women I have seen with this disease are very large.
I have had Fibro and CMP since I was 13 years old, it appeared after I had accident that almost killed me. I was about 90 pounds at that time. It took a specialist to diagnose it when I was 21 years old when I was about 110 pounds. I am now 41+ years old and yes I am much heavier now but the weight has not caused my Fibro/CMP to get worse. So the body weight of someone who truly has Fibro/CMP has nothing to do with it.
Fibro/CMP is a very real illiness but I do agree that doctors are misdiagnosing it these days.
You may also want to check into if she has CMP (Chronic Myofascial Pain) if her pain locations move around. (Settle in one area and then move to another location in her body). CMP pain can last for weeks in one spot and then suddenly go away or move to another area of the body.
Here is an article for you to check out. She can have both CMP and Fibro. This article can explain how tell which symptoms are Fibro related and which are CMP related.
http://www.sover.net/~devstar/define.htm
Most people who have Fibro have CMP.
what a stupid line.
bttt
I agree. ADHD is real but overdiagnosed as well....
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